


This Empty (out of which you rose)

by margctbishop



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: A LOT of psychoanalyzing, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, and the only actual plot coming in at the end of chap 1, basically David trying to cope, fuck you jed, i'm a whore for feelings, if I say this is a "fix it" fic does it give too much away?, she's not dead, sue me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-01-24 00:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/margctbishop/pseuds/margctbishop
Summary: the first 5 months following the explosion during which David mourns and remembers Julia's life. And the one night he comes home to find an unmarked box on his doorstep.





	1. Chapter 1

 

Emptiness is heavy, he’s come to discover. The words seem inane when placed alongside one another, paradoxical in nature, and had he heard the phrase fall from the lips of another a few months prior, he wouldn’t have understood. War, he would have reasoned, is heavy. Having to relive the moment your best friend drops to the dirt when a bullet nestles its way into his brain, that’s heavy. Love, too, sometimes; looking into the eyes of the person you love only to see shame and pity peering back at you. The hopelessness that constantly scratches at the back of your skull when you lie down in a house that isn’t your home, that is too impersonal and frigid to be anyone’s home. Losing your father to cancer, then your mother to drink. These things are heavy.

The weeks following the explosion were anything but empty. The shock wore off quickly, leaving behind confusion and a nearly unbearable sadness. He launched himself into the investigation, commandeering those willing to listen and pressuring the more reluctant until they, too, became pliant under his fingers. The more he uncovered, the less he understood, and white anger congealed in his gut as the days passed without answers, clouding over the sadness and etching out a singular word over and over down the length of his spine: _why?_

“We don’t know why, David,” Anne Sampson had told him, teacup clutched in one hand and a report in the other, just barely managing to avert her eyes from the sheet of paper to bestow upon him a measly glance. She had seemed so utterly unperturbed, as if being no closer to locking down a suspect 2 months after the Home Secretary had been blown apart was a slight snag in an otherwise well-oiled machine. After arriving back in the apartment, he had been surprised to unfurl his tightly clenched fists and find smears of blood, crescent indentions carved into the palms of his hands, the nail on his right ring finger just sharp enough to pierce skin. The stinging was soon forgotten, however, when the momentary shock of the act dissipated and his steadily growing rage forced him to launch a half-empty whiskey bottle across the room, the shattered glass falling with satisfying  _tink_ s and dark liquid dripping down the wall.

3 weeks later, Anne telephoned to inform him of a breakthrough: they’d charged a man with the assassination of Julia Montague, and he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. “He’s a deranged man who wanted a way to draw attention to his anti-government, pro-bigotry agenda. And he found it.” His requests to speak to the man personally were adamantly denied, and the so-called “breakthrough” only succeeded in fueling his anger rather than resolving it. She said that they could all begin to move toward _closure_ , that they should honor Julia’s memory by building a brighter future for the country, and David slammed the phone down so forcefully that cracks snaked across the glass.

This, for David, was heavy. Having no choice but to accept that some nutjob with a fucked-up head was single-handedly responsible for the assassination of the Home Secretary was _heavy._ But emptiness? Over the course of the first 3 months, there were but a few times when he wouldn’t have traded in the violent turmoil thrashing around in his body for a taste of relief, for an emptiness to slip down into.

That was where he had been mistaken, he thinks. You don’t _slip down_ into emptiness; you submit to it. There comes a point when the sadness and the rage and the confusion have all been exhausted, when the body and mind cripple under the strain but the soul is not yet ready for acceptance. Live-wire emotions give way to a numbness creeping along the outskirts of the brain, until something eventually trips the breaker, and everything goes grey. 

It sits like a stone on his chest when he tries to sleep, makes him dream of thick fog and the act of inhaling smoke from a housefire. He likens the feeling to what he imagines living on the ocean floor to be like, the pressure closing around him but him having no desire to swim toward the surface, to seek out the oxygen his body is so desperately pleading for. He takes up drinking, instead, every evening coming back to the empty apartment after another day working the mundane desk job he’d been assigned and heading straight for the liquor cabinet. He knows that the anger remains, that every heady emotion and reckless tendency he’d felt in the weeks following her death exists just beneath his skin, but he doesn’t feel them. He doesn’t feel _anything_ , though he knows he should, so night after night, he drinks until intoxication fills him back up.

A few weeks later, he manages to convince himself to go to the pub, but every short-haired brunette with her back turned to him, every snarky, poshly accented voice floating through the crowded space only serves to remind him of everything he’s lost. He hasn’t been to a pub since. He leaves the apartment only to work and visit his children, and the day sweet Ella hesitantly pulls her attention from her reading assignment to meet his eyes and asks why he never laughs anymore, gravity hits him.

With a clenched jaw he tells her that something very bad happened to someone he was supposed to be protecting, and she considers this a moment.

“The lady who was on the T.V.?” she asks, and when he nods, she returns her attention to the book. And then, “Was she your friend?”

Such a simple question, one that he’s asked himself on multiple occasions, but it still brings David up short. Was she his friend in terms of someone with whom he could easily share a few drinks and light conversation? Not really. Everything between the two of them rarely resembled easy and, precluding the one or two moments lying in the afterglow underneath her sheets and sharing childhood aspirations, their conversations had been anything but light, nearly always on the verge of imploding from everything left unsaid, everything they _couldn’t_ say. But she _was_ someone whom he’d grown to trust, to depend on, even. So much so that he had come to take for granted her constant presence, always two steps in front of him in the public eye and two inches beside him behind closed doors. 

But how is he to explain this to an 11-year-old child? So he hums in the affirmative, and he’s just pushing the image of brown curls framing a pale face from his mind when Ella speaks again.

“Will you tell me about her?” Talking about Julia is the last thing he wants to do, he doesn’t even let himself think of her, but Ella is looking at him again, big eyes peering into his with curiosity etched across her face, so he sighs and tries to decide where to begin.

He tells her of ambition, how when Julia Montague decided on something, she went for it with everything inside her, how she never did anything in halves. He speaks of her intelligence, tells Ella that it didn’t matter which room he followed her into or who was in that room, Julia was the brightest one there, every time without fail. And her passion, while sometimes misguided in his opinion, was ever-present and inspiring. He tells her of an unexpected kindness, a goodness that she liked to keep hidden away behind stony expressions and clipped conversations but that stemmed from a desire _to help people_.

“That’s all she really wanted, I think,” he says softly, and he doesn’t know if he’s talking for the sake of his daughter or for himself. “To help people.”

The expression on Ella’s face is unreadable, and he suddenly wishes he could take it all back, or that she wouldn’t hang on his every word the way she is now. When she eventually opens her mouth, he steels himself for the question that he’s sure will tumble from her lips next: _did you love her?_ Because from the way he’s just described Julia, that’s the only logical conclusion. He did love her, he still does, he realizes, and in that moment, he probably would have told Ella as much, but she asks if she can have some chocolate milk and picks her book back up instead.

 

He opts to walk home rather than call a cab, hands shoved into pockets as he makes his way through the London streets. For the first time in 5 months, he’d let himself speak of her. Telling his daughter about the enigma that was Julia Montague hadn’t been nearly as devastating as he thought it would be, the words falling from his tongue as easily as if he had been relaying something so mundane as what his weekend plans were. But now that the proverbial seal had been broken, he’s overwhelmed with an assault of all things Julia.

He thinks first of her smile, not the perfected one she’d constructed for the public, but the genuine one she reserved for quieter moments. How the right corner of her mouth would quirk up ever so slightly more than the left and the light crinkles beside her eyes would give her face a damn near angelic glow. How she was _soft_ , in a way that he would have never thought possible. Her voice, almost always stern and demanding when speaking to the press or fellow members of the cabinet, took on an air of lightness when it was just the two of them. _Never weak_ , he thinks to himself with a small smile, _just soft_. He had only ever been lucky enough to wake with her still by his side on a few precious occasions, but it was enough for him to be certain that mornings were his favorite: her sleep-rattled slow words, the breathy rumble in her chest as she hummed out quiet laughter, her cocooned in pearly white sheets and gazing up at him through fine lashes, the demeanor in those golden eyes _soft_ and contented and acutely unbridled. This is the Julia he remembers.

And then it’s as if someone takes a blade to his wrist and slices his skin open, every emotion and feeling and memory pouring out and engulfing him, and he’s _feeling_ again.

Oh God, is he feeling, and it’s all her.

He sucks mouthfuls of brisk London air into his lungs, struggling desperately to reign himself in and failing anyway, hot tears dripping down his cheeks so feverishly that he gives up trying to wipe them away. He ducks behind the nearest building, bringing a forearm up to press against the cool brick and tucking his head in his elbow, and he realizes he must be carrying on quite loudly when a man nearby asks if he’s alright (no, he isn’t) and if he should call David a cab home. He waves a dismissal toward the direction of the voice, grateful that the man takes it as assurance enough to leave.

He doesn’t know how long he stays like that, sobbing into the crook of his arm with an occasional fist slamming into the brick, but when a harsh light flicks on above him and sends him careening back to the reality of him weeping in a London alley in the dead of night, he manages to smear the tears with the backs of his hands and continue on his way.

It’s better this way, he realizes as he rounds the corner, the front of his building coming into view. Not feeling anything may have been easier, having the numbness as a cushion between his heart and the seemingly omnipotent pain, but it didn’t feel right. He _needs_ to remember her, in all her enigmatic and consuming glory. He owes it to her, he thinks. He doesn’t know how many other people had been privy to seeing the true Julia, how many blokes she’d allowed to meet the raw version of herself that wasn’t groomed or polished, but he couldn’t bear if the only Julia Montague that’s remembered and mourned is the falsified, armored version of her. Remembering her, her smiles and her passion and her softness, allows him to breathe easier, too, and he figures that keeping her with him in memory, reliving the precious few moments they were given, is a hell of a lot better than wallowing in emptiness.

It’s with this thought swimming through his head that the elevator dings and he’s stepping onto his floor, foot barely planted on solid flooring when he notices it. The box is small, no adorning paper masking its cardboard simplicity or postage stamps signaling its origin. He lifts it tentatively, surveying it briefly before tucking it under an arm and using his other hand to fish the key out of his back pocket.

Locking the door behind him, he quickly flicks on a lamp and retrieves a knife from the kitchen, gliding it between the single line of tape sealing the package. He unboxes it carefully, until the four sides of the top are unfurled and the contents inside are exposed to the air. He studies it, gripping the outside so tightly that the cardboard begins to give way under his fingers, recognition dawning gradually. It’s white fabric, he notes, a blouse, more specifically. He reaches for it slowly, just barely allowing the tips of his fingers to skim it over when it hits him. _The perfume_. David Budd would know that perfume anywhere. He clutches it in his hands, brings it to his face and inhales until the only thing he’s cognizant of is _Julia_. It’s her, through and through, and he can’t find it within himself to give a damn that, for the second time tonight, he’s weeping like a child.

One hand still holding the blouse to his cheek, he brings the other back to the box, turning and flipping it until he’s _sure_ there isn’t a note, any sign of where it came from or who sent it. There isn’t, so he lets it drop to the floor, shedding his shirt and jeans and slipping into the blouse, fastening enough buttons to ensure it doesn’t slip from his frame. The logical part of him knows he should be wary, that the explanation he favors for this blessed turn of events is almost certainly impossible, but when he slips into bed and closes his eyes, he can pretend that she’s lying next to him. And for the first time in 5 agonizing months, David doesn’t dream.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the lovely responses on the first chapter! I'm sorry I took so long to update, but this chapter's quite lengthy so hopefully it'll make up for it.
> 
> Also, my timeline is certainly not canon-compliant because I wanted to give them a little more time to be sickeningly sweet before the explosion. Oh, & Kim is still alive because I'm tired of ladies dying :)

He comes to consciousness before his alarm sounds, a sleepy smile tugging at his mouth as he curls further into the comforter. For the smallest fraction of a moment, he forgets that she’s dead, her scent surrounding him and a blessedly restful night’s sleep leaving him content and warm. The illusion is shattered all too quickly, however, when he goes to reach a hand across the expanse of the bed in search of her and is met instead with empty sheets and a profound coldness. He remembers the events of the previous night, folds his arms across his face and breathes, the lingering perfume filling his head until he exhales with a shaky breath and the oddity of the situation sinks in. He slips out of bed quickly, locating the box amongst the clothes he had haphazardly discarded and sighing his disappointment when he confirms that he hadn’t missed a note or postage mark in the frenzy of the night before.

Her smell is already fading from the shirt, so he strips himself of it and folds it neatly back into the box, digging in a kitchen drawer until he locates the packing tape and is able to seal it again. He notes the time and figures he’ll risk the reprimanding for being late to work so he can make a stop by the front office on his way out. He dresses and grabs his phone from the nightstand, slipping it into his pocket and sparing one final glance at the box resting on his unmade bed before opening the door.

The office is empty save for the receptionist who casts David a wary glance as he barges into the small space. She’s willing enough to comply when he requests to view the security footage from the previous night, him making sure to slip into the conversation some bullshit about _government business_ and her meekly leading him into a back room with a computer that looks like it materialized straight out of the London Met headquarters from Gene Hunt’s days. With some maneuvering, he’s able to pull up the desired footage, selecting the desired frames. There’s movement nearing the 8 PM mark, so he pauses the video and zooms. Despite the graininess of the image, David can see that the man on the screen isn’t part of a delivery service, dressed in plain clothes and a black baseball cap. He only turns toward the camera once, but it’s enough for David to get a clear look of his face, and he snaps a picture with his phone after deeming the hassle of figuring out how to print from the dinosaur of a computer to not be worth it.

He mumbles his thanks to the woman and heads out, hailing a cab as he steps onto the sidewalk. Once inside, he relays the address to the driver and brings his phone from his pocket, studying the man responsible for bringing the box to him, but he’s utterly unfamiliar to David. He sighs loudly, letting his head fall back to rest on the seat and brings a finger to press against his left temple.

Last night, he hadn’t let himself think of the possibilities that the shirt brought along with it. He’d been too overwhelmed to carry out anything resembling logical thought, but now he can’t seem to _stop_ thinking. The chances that Julia was the one to send it to him, that Julia is _alive_ , are practically nonexistent, he knows that. That some twisted bastard decided to have a laugh at David’s expense is infinitely more likely, but the idea that maybe, _just maybe_ she isn’t dead, that she sent the blouse to him as some sort of cryptid signal (definitely not typical Julia fashion, but desperate times, he supposes) sends something akin to an electric shock through his brain, has him itching and desperate and on the verge of committing heinous acts if it means holding her in his arms again.

And it begins with the identity of the delivery man, so around lunchtime when Kim comes over and asks if he wants her to pick him anything up from the Jimmy John’s up the street (he doesn’t but thanks her anyways), he brings out his phone and pulls up the picture, asking if she recognizes the man on the screen.

“Sorry, Skipper,” she says, shaking her head as she pulls on her coat. “You checked the database for matches?”

“Aye,” he confirms. “Nothing.”

“You might put a couple posters up ‘round here,” she suggests, adjusting the lapels and reaching for her purse. “Who is he?”

“No one important,” he says quickly, perhaps a bit too quickly if the high-rise of her eyebrows is any indication. “Just someone the receptionist saw snooping around my complex. Probably nothing.”

“Right,” she says, sparing him a look before turning on her heels. “Cheers, Skip.”

He turns next to Anne Sampson, waiting until a man (more of a boy, if he’s being honest, who sports a sheepish look on his face and meets David’s eyes for a mere second before scurrying out of the room) exits before letting himself in, leaving the door cracked behind him. He wastes no time, hurriedly locating the image of the face that’s growing to haunt his waking hours as of recent and presenting it to her.

“Pardon the interruption, ma’am, but do you recognize this man?” He asks, relinquishing his hold on the device when she takes it from his hands to inspect the picture up close. She takes her time, eyes eventually flicking up to scan his face before handing the phone back.

“Can’t say that I do,” she replies easily, busying her hands with straightening the paperwork littering her desk. “Who is he?”

He doesn’t know why he doesn’t relay the same excuse he had to Kim, maybe it’s because he’s supposed to be able to trust this woman, or maybe it’s because he _doesn’t_ trust her, the persona of indifference that she puts forth not derailing his search in the slightest .

“He left a package on my doorstep last night,” he says, studying her face but unable to discern anything from her uninterested façade and the noncommittal hum she lets out.

“Anything interested?” She asks, her pen hovering in midair for a long moment before continuing its scribbling.

“No,” he says simply. A silence that borders uncomfortable falls between them, but he says nothing further. There’s something about the impassivity she projects, about the way she refuses to meet his eyes longer than a fleeting second, that makes the little hairs on his arms stand up. He is trained, which means he usually has a pretty good sense of when someone is being less than honest. It also means he knows that his best chance of identifying this man rests on the shoulders of this woman, so he decides to try another route. “Yes, actually,” he corrects himself. “Something that belonged to the Home Secretary.”

Her shoulders tense visibly, the pen suddenly strangled between clenched fingers, and for the first time since his arrival, her gaze connects perfectly with his. The violence in her eyes nearly frightens him.

“Shut the door, David,” she says firmly, and he wastes no time before doing as he’s instructed, returning and seating himself in the chair beside her desk when she nods to it pointedly. “What was in the box?”

“All due respect, but it’s personal,” he says, and upon viewing the pinched expression making an appearance on an already strained face, he quickly adds, “ma’am.”

“I see,” she says. “And why do you think this man would have possession of a _personal item_ which once belonged to the late Home Secretary?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” he admits. The way she studies him makes him uneasy, but he doesn’t avert his gaze.

“David,” she begins, a sympathetic grimace suddenly replacing the sternness in her features. “Though we’ve attempted to use utmost discretion, there remains a chance that news of your _intimate_ relationship with the Home Secretary has spread outside of the immediate circle.” The clench of his jaw has her continuing, “Some people have a perverted sense of humor. It is likely nothing more than that.” She seems sincere, appealing to him as though she actually cares for his feelings, but he dares to continue.

“And if it isn’t?” he asks, and just like that, any glint of kindness leaves her eyes, and she fixes him with a cold stare.

“What are you implying?” From the way she asks the question, he suspects that she knows exactly what he’s implying, and her carrying on without waiting for his response is confirmation enough. “You saw her body, David. You saw her injuries, the blood-“

“She was still breathing last I saw her.”

“Well she isn’t anymore,” she says quickly. “She’s dead, David. Someone sending you something that you claim once belonged to her doesn’t change that.”

She says it so matter-of-factly that it’s almost enough to convince him of the insanity of it all. He doubts that the brand of perfume she had worn is common knowledge, but it would be easy enough to find one of her former interns and learn the name of the shop from which she’d procured it. It’s only a matter of knowing whom to ask and where to go, and David knows that this is the most plausible explanation. But he remembers lying in bed with that blouse on, remembers the unmistakable scent of _her_ surrounding him in every possible way as he drifted to sleep, and he knows that, implausible or not, he won’t rest easily until he can be sure.

“Of course, ma’am,” he says, noting the way she seems to settle into this resignation with a sigh of relief. “It was all so sudden, I guess. Not much closure.”

“I understand,” she says, but he can tell the conversation is over when she retrieves her pen from the desk and begins searching for a file in her drawer. He rises to leave, uttering a swift “ma’am” before turning on his heel.

“David,” she says, halting his exit. When he turns to her, his eyes lock with hers. “It would be best if you didn’t mention this to anyone. It’s been hard on everyone. Drudging up fruitless suspicions wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interest.”

It had been almost enough to convince him: the practicality of her responses, the sureness in her eyes. But he remembers the blouse, he remembers Julia, and he sees the look in Anne Sampson’s eyes, hears the edge in her voice which she tries to mask with indifference.

David isn’t convinced.

 

Two weeks pass and he’s no closer to locating the man than he had been at the start. He’d asked around the apartment complex, went into a few local restaurants and stores and shown around the picture, and had even tacked a printed photocopy of his face onto the bulletin board in the front office, all of which turned out to be fruitless. He has no leads, no idea whom to turn to next with his inquiries, and the blouse no longer smells of her, which doesn’t stop him from falling asleep in it every night anyway.

Before its arrival, David dreamed nearly every night. The dreams were always a variation of the same scene, but they left him waking up in cold sweats all the same, his entire body shaking and a pounding in his temples. The nights were filled with flames, with soot and blood and the feel of her limp body lying terrifyingly still beneath his. He hated them, hated that he had to relive what rightly constituted as the worst day of his life (which was saying something) every time he closed his eyes. He hated waking with the image of her face, which had been so full of expression in life, unsettlingly motionless and dripping with her blood.

And, apart from the first night, he continues to dream, but the dreams are significantly less scarring; he would even call them comforting. The odd image of her inert body still manages to worm its way into his conscious every so often, but mostly he dreams of happier times.

Sometimes they’re memories, flittering through his brain and allowing him to slumber in a world where the woman he loves is alive and well. He dreams of the evening when he’d been sitting in bed and heard a tentative knock on his door, but instead of her initiating one of their increasingly frequent trysts, she’d quietly asked if he would mind terribly going down to the store and picking up ice cream because apparently it hadn’t bore thinking about what she would’ve done if she had to read through _one more maddeningly endless proposal from some moron possessing the grammar skills of a 13 year-old child_ without chocolate _._ She hadn’t actually read through another proposal once he’d arrived back with a gallon of chocolate and another of butter pecan, opting instead to climb into her bed with both tubs and two spoons, foregoing bowls completely and patting the empty space beside her in invitation. He feels the same awe in his dream that he’d felt when the moment had actually taken place, when he’d stood at the threshold of her room and watched as the formidable Home Secretary, clad in loose clothes and fuzzy socks, silently invited him to sit in bed with her and eat ice cream straight out of the carton.

One night he dreams of the time he’d entered her room so he could brief her on a change in the normal route to the office for the following day due to construction. It had been a weak excuse to make sure that she was alright after Roger, the weaselly bastard, had caught them before they’d had a chance to leave the office and thrown himself in her face, accusing her of shamelessly making a play for Number 10. She’d deflected him gracefully, letting a remark slip about his own questionable character before slipping into the car, leaving David to openly glare at the man before closing her door.

But she hadn’t been in her room, and the light streaming from under the bathroom door and the sound of running water had made David turn on his heels and begin to make his way back to his room, when the distinct sound of singing had him pausing.

He remembers how shocked he’d been, frozen like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar and unable to do anything except listen. He hadn’t recognized the song, but he’d known that it definitely wasn’t English, her voice reverberating off the shower walls and sounding like the heavens had opened up and were serenading him. He’d stayed until he’d heard the water turn off and forced himself to leave her room, shutting the adjoining door quietly.

He wakes with the song in his head, though he knows not a single word, but the melody swims around in his brain as he violently throws an arm to silence the ringing of his alarm. The blessed silence and scratch of the blouse against his skin has him sinking back into the comforter, allowing him to relive the memory.

_The sound of the shower’s been replaced by a distinct shuffling from the other room, and he finds a smile resting on his lips as he envisions her padding about barefoot. He waits for what he feels is an appropriate amount of time before rising from his seated position on the bed and walking to the adjoining door, armed with the same reason for disturbing her as before. He knocks twice and opens the door upon her called out confirmation, and he feels his stomach clench at the sight before him._

_She has her back to him, a white robe wrapped around her frame that’s terribly reminiscent of their first night together. He can see her fussing with a necklace, trying to untangle a knot that had materialized in the chain, and it strikes him that there’s something so bloody domestic about it all: gone is the powerhouse of the Home Secretary, replaced by this extraordinarily human woman who sings in the shower and has wet tendrils of hair snaking down her neck. She turns toward him absentmindedly, not bringing her eyes to meet his until the offending knot is satisfactorily untangled, and he imagines that his face must reflect his musings if the way she stiffens under his gaze and brings her arms to fold across her stomach is anything to go by._

_“What?” she asks, and although he knows he should say something, he finds that all words escape him and chooses to close the distance between them instead. She throws a wary look toward the hand he raises to finger a piece of dripping hair that had fallen in front of her face. “David?”_

_He gives her a soft smile then, drops his head so he can lightly press his lips against hers. He feels her relax against him as she allows her arms to unfold and wrap around his waist. The kiss is unhurried, paints a stark contrast against the feverish ones they usually partake in, but it has his heart pounding hellishly against his ribs all the same. He pulls away, brushes the piece of hair behind her ear and notes the faint furrowing of her brow._

_“Tell me,” she whispers, and he doesn’t know how he could ever begin to put everything he feels into actual sentences that are coherent enough for her to understand. She’s so different than he could’ve imagined, so gloriously human. Yes, she’s terrifying when she wants to be, able to force grown men to curl into themselves and scurry away under her gaze alone, and she’s unquestionably the most brilliant, tactical politician he’s ever encountered. But she’s also warm, kinder than he’d ever thought possible. Beneath her meticulously constructed armour of infallibleness and hauteur, she’s a person not unlike the rest of them, albeit one who has the voice of an angel and resembles a Greek goddess._

_“You can sing,” he says simply, because above everything else that seems to be the one thing that he can vocalize. She tenses in his arms, raises her shoulders and averts her gaze downward. A faint blush colors her cheeks._

_“I didn’t realize you’d be able to hear,” she says softly._

_“I came in to make you aware of a change in the route for tomorrow morning, but then I heard you,” he explains._

_“So you were eavesdropping,” she says simply, and he worries for a fragment of a moment before he glimpses the slight upturn of her lips. “Not very professional, Sergeant Budd.”_

_“I’d call it admiring, ma’am” he says, enjoying the way her cheeks turn a deeper shade of red. She pulls away from him, depositing the necklace on her bedside table and walking over to retrieve two glasses from a cabinet before pouring them what he assumes to be some ridiculously expensive wine_

_“What was that song?” he dares ask, his fingers brushing against hers as he takes a glass from her outstretched hand. She doesn’t say anything for nearly a full minute, and he begins to wonder if she’s simply going to allow the question to go unanswered when she sits on the bed and opens her mouth._

_“One my mother taught me when I was small,” she says, pulling her legs in so she can wrap her arms around them. He waits until she gestures to the space next to her before he sinks down beside her, careful not to let any of the wine slosh onto the comforter._

_“Is it French?” he asks, and her hum of confirmation has him continuing. “I didn’t know you spoke French.”_

_“You don’t have to speak a language to know a song,” she replies. And then, “There are many things you don’t know about me.” The way she says it, how she drops her head to peer into the clear liquid and traces the rim of her glass, refusing to meet his gaze, makes him want to admit that it frankly wouldn’t matter what he does or doesn’t know about her. Makes him want to tell her how badly he wishes she would let him inside her thoughts for a look around, but even if she never allows him to be privy to the innerworkings of her mind, he would never cease looking at her the way he does now. Like he can’t believe she’s real, complex and oftentimes infuriatingly beguiling woman that she is, much less sat next to him on this bed drinking wine and radiating warmth._

_“I do, though,” she says, interrupting his thoughts and causing him to quirk an eyebrow in her direction. “Speak French.”_

_“Say something,” he says, and she shakes her head furiously as a small laugh escapes her. “Oh, come on. One thing, anything.” She sits silently for a moment, and he’s about to make an attempt at bribing her when she speaks._

_“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?” she says, and he can tell that she’s trying to suppress a devilishly persistent smirk as she takes a small sip from the glass._

_“Oh, come on now. That’s not fair. Even I know that one,” he replies, allowing a grin of his own to slip easily onto his features. “But for the record, yes.” And she laughs then, a rich sound that filters through the air and has him leaning over and covering her lips with his own. She sighs the remains of her laughter into him, letting the hand not otherwise occupied with the wine trail upward and cup his neck, fingernails lightly scraping against his scalp. When he returns to his respective side of the bed, neither of their smiles dissipates._

_“How did you learn?”_

_“My mother,” she answers easily. He waits for her to elaborate, which she does after a moment of thought. “She met some fabulously exotic Frenchman when she was at a conference for work. A few months later and she left my father for him, moved into a little house in Giverny that the man had bought for her.” She downs the rest of her drink in one gulp, rising in search of the bottle and returning with it in hand. “I spent most weekends and holidays down there with her. The man turned out to be married with children, naturally, so he left her. But she never came back. She loved it there, lived out the rest of her life in that little house.”_

_“Sounds peaceful,” he says, takes the bottle from her so he can top himself off._

_“It was,” she agrees, settling more comfortably into the bedding. She closes her eyes, and David would think that she was drifting off to sleep if it weren’t for the contented upward turn of her lips. Her eyes eventually open again, but she doesn’t look at him. She keeps them fixed on the ceiling, the smile turning wistful as she adds, “It was freeing.”_


End file.
